In cellular systems, each time a new session attempts to access the system, a decision as to whether or not to admit the session must be made. Methods for achieving this one commonly referred to as call admission control methods. Most conventional call admission control methods make this decision based upon system resources such as frequency usage. Others employ the use of metrics such as power control, signal-to-noise ratio, and a required quality of service of multiple services for example. Generally speaking, these methods have not been designed to deal with modern cellular systems in which many multimedia subscribers compete to access the air interface with different types of services which require specific qualities of services.
Furthermore, conventional techniques do not predict what will happen if a particular session is admitted, but rather continue to admit sessions until quality drops to an unacceptable level for all the sessions. For example, when the average base station transmit power is used as a basis for admitting sessions, sessions are admitted until the transmit power is too high and quality goes down.
When there are multiple types of sessions, existing parameters are not all influenced by these sessions in a predictable manner. Furthermore, existing parameters are not necessarily usable in the MAC (media access control) layer, but rather might be usable at the physical layer for example.